


No Second Chances

by Reikah



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: M/M, Mage Rebellion, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 06:49:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5818324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reikah/pseuds/Reikah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The truth of it - the real moral of the tale, maybe - is that 'happily ever after' comes in many different guises, and no two ever look quite alike.</p><p>Or: a brief look at Anders & Hawke following the end of Trespasser. <i>It was quiet and empty within their hollow when Anders awoke. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	No Second Chances

**Author's Note:**

> For anon.

It was quiet and empty within their hollow when Anders awoke. 

Dog lay silently on his blanket next to their bedroll, his paws tucked almost underneath himself; there was a light frost upon the ground, and their breaths billowed as white mist in the air. When Anders sat up - awkwardly and reluctantly, he thought there might have been a tree root under their ground sheet - the mutt glanced at him briefly and then looked away again, out across the glen.

“Good morning to you too,” Anders said, wincing as he rubbed at his back, and throwing aside the top blanket. Underneath it he was fully clothed - the better to move quickly if they were disturbed overnight. “Where’s your master?”

The mabari huffed and rose slowly to his feet, and Anders stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. With a faint flicker of effort, he sent a rejuvenating curl of magic through the dog’s frame, forcing back some of the stiffness that lingered in the old boy’s hips and knees; Dog shook himself off vigorously and whuffled quietly in gratitude. It was an old routine, one Anders had adopted when he caught the dog limping one morning after Hawke had left for Weisshaupt, and it seemed to help. 

None of them were getting any younger, but at least he had Justice. 

He followed the dog through the glen and down toward the stream they’d drawn water from for their cookpot last night. Hawke was kneeling on the smoothly-ground stones by the water’s edge, their clothing arranged about him, one neat pile to be washed and both their spare trousers wrung-out and drying atop higher rocks. 

“Starting without me?” Anders said, taking a seat next to him, and paused; Hawke held a rolled-up strip of parchment, the length of his hand and the width of his thumb. “Was there a raven?”

“Overnight,” Hawke agreed. “Woke me up with the most hideous noise. Thought the dog was choking on a chicken bone again, but no; just a bird.”

Dog yawned agreeably at this assessment, wriggling in between them like he was a much smaller animal than he actually was. Anders obligingly leaned aside for him, frowning. “I didn’t wake up?”

“You were absolutely out of it, my love,” Hawke said, very gently. “Forgive me for not waking you. I know you haven’t been sleeping well.”

Warden dreams. Anders was reconciled by now, albeit with some bitterness, to the idea that he would never sleep ‘well’ again. Justice did what he could, pushing the nightmares away the way he had tried so hard to fend off the Calling - but Warden nightmares weren’t the only ones plaguing Anders nowadays. “Thank you,” he said, and lay an arm over the dog’s thick shoulders. After a moment, Hawke covered it with his hand.

For a time they watched the stream together; early-morning fog wreathed its way across the water, and dragonflies darted here and there amongst the water-side plants. Felendris, Anders saw, with his healer’s eyes, and made a note to take some cuttings of root and leaf before they moved on. Spindleweed grew in abundance in the shallows, and occasionally ripples eddied across the water’s surface, minor disturbances from underneath. Fish for breakfast, perhaps? They could hold off on the beef jerky they’d bought a week ago a little longer, with a sample of fish; there was, to hear the villagers talk, a dragon holed up a mile and a half away, and most large game had already scarpered for safer grounds. 

After a while Hawke said, “The raven was from Varric.”

Anders tilted his head. A dragonfly buzzed near his cheek; he blinked and it darted off into the reeds, iridescent blue. “How is he? Still with the Inquisition?”

“No,” Hawke said, and looked down at the parchment slip. “No, he’s - no. Anders, I - I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

“I’m not bathing the dog for you,” Anders said immediately, in an effort to coax a smile from him. Hawke’s countenance was beginning to worry him. “It starts with the bathing, and then it’s ‘Anders, can we get another’ and then it’s a whole pack of dogs - I draw the line, love.”

“A pack of mabari would be _wonderful_ ,” Hawke agreed, the corner of his mouth turning up, “But not what I wanted _at this very moment in time_. Tomorrow, maybe. No, I just… I just wondered where you wanted to go from here. Geographically.”

“Oh.” He had to pause. He’d been following Hawke since leaving Weisshaupt; with the mages rising up in open rebellion, there’d been no need for the two of them to continue their hidden incitement, their trips from Circle to Circle across Thedas encouraging mages to rise up. And with the Inquisition allying with the mages, and Divine Victoria herself declaring them free… Well. They’d been wandering, more than anything else.

Resting, if he were to be honest. Maybe even _recovering_. Four years of being on the run, and then, separating - Hawke to Skyhold, Anders to Dairsmuid, to help Adrian and her militant libertarians clear out a small enclave of leftover red templars… when Varric’s letter had come he’d left within a week, and it felt like an age since they had time to themselves. He’d missed Hawke, quite terribly. 

“I haven’t thought about it,” he admitted. “I haven’t thought about much beyond catching some fish for dinner, perhaps.”

Hawke gave him a queer look. “I have _seen_ you try to fish, you know,” he said.

“Then you know I get results,” Anders replied.

“Electrocuting the water is not _results_ ,” Hawke countered. “You have to leave some alive for the next day. There’s an art to it! I can’t believe - so many escape attempts and six years on the run and you still haven’t learned how to tickle trout.”

Anders grinned, knocking their shoulders together lightly. “My apologies for not being as schooled in outdoorsmanship as you,” he said. “Did they give out the beard as an award for passing the class?”

“You like it,” Hawke said amiably, running a hand along the increasingly scruffy line of his full beard, and, well, Anders couldn’t argue with that.

“Did you have a plan?” he asked, instead.

“Oh.” Hawke’s smirk faded, and his hand drooped to caress the slip of paper on his lap. “Yes. No. Maybe?” He sighed, letting his head hang. Anders waited patiently as around them the frogs croaked and the dog awkwardly sunk down onto his belly, red tongue lolling, eyes on the flashing red-and-blue plumage of a darting kingfisher on the other side of the stream. The dragon’s proximity had clearly not interrupted matters in this little clearing.

The dog yawned hugely, and Hawke raised the messenger slip, parchment still curled into a ring from its journey attached to a raven’s leg, and said, “They’ve cleared Sebastian’s men out of Kirkwall. Varric, um. Varric’s the Viscount now.”

Anders slowly lifted his eyebrows. Last they’d heard - a couple of years ago, now, and from Aveline - Bran was running the city in all but name. “What did he say to you?”

In lieu of answer Hawke just handed the parchment slip over. A green dragonfly landed on Anders’s thumb as he began to unfurl it, but took off again almost immediately, before Anders had time to do more than register the shape of its wings, the weight of its legs. The paper was dry and brittle, but it held.

Varric had used a fine blue ink for his missive, and Anders remembered it well. It was a good ink, although it had a habit of staining terribly. He’d borrowed a pot or two, as a matter of urgency, when an idea bubbled up in his nebulous shared headspace and he knew not at all whether it was his own or Justice’s but that it belonged in their manifesto. 

If he thought back, he could remember writing fragments of words in the Hanged Man while their weekly Wicked Grace game carried on around him, caught up in things he absolutely needed to pin down on borrowed paper before they drifted away; pots of blue ink and those ridiculous quills Varric loved so much unfamiliar in his fingers as he scrawled out key phrases as and when they emerged: _Mages succumb to demons from fear more frequently than any lust for power. Keeping mages trapped and confined in terror therefore leads to a much higher risk of possession…_

 _Kirkwall’s ours again_ , Varric had written. _The bastards made me Viscount. I mean, shit, some fucking thanks, huh?_ The ink blotted messily around the question mark, and then, underneath: _the old estate’s still standing. Still yours. What do you want done with it?_

The Hawke estate. Anders had thought about the old townhouse more often than he’d admit, in the years since they’d left Kirkwall a smouldering speck on the horizon; columns of smoke curling up into a sky as red as Hawke’s furnishings. Anders had, despite Hawke’s words, privately thought Hawke would turn back, would leave him; he had worked so hard, risked so much to get the estate in the first place, and he’d tried to hint that he wouldn’t mind, wouldn’t _blame_ Hawke, but -

 _I’m allergic to feather mattresses_ , Hawke had claimed, with a shit-eating grin. Or, _red’s not really my colour anyway._

 _Too many books. Too many_ bad _books. I swear, if I never see another phallic-shaped tuber, it’ll be too soon. Sometimes I worry that Isabela’s book broke me, that I now see all tubers as phallic and my life will never again be free of suggestive root vegetables. Best to stay away, before my sleeping thoughts are all on peculiar turnips and carrots of impressive girth._

_The windows were always too big, remember, Anders? The sun would slap me right in the face, first thing in the morning. That or the dog. Remember the size of the rats he’d bring up from the cellars? I’m not saying I could saddle them up and ride them, just that the Inquisitor’s war-nugs have some serious competition._

_Those hideous statues in the library always gave me nightmares. Mostly of being the sort of person to commission hideous statues for his library, which was oddly prophetic, I suppose._

_The security on that place was horrendous. Do you know how many times I found some commoners had broken in just to have a conversation with my dog? What do you mean, 'Varric’s not a commoner?’ I guess you’re right, actually. Takes some serious finances to grow such a magnificent crop of chest fur. I should know._

And, finally, several months later when they’d worn in another pair of boots and were trudging, sore-footed and hungry, to a town still four days away, _Because I don’t want it. Why do you keep asking, Anders?_

He’d drawn to a stop - risky, in the middle of the road, but the sharp rocks in between the tree roots on either side of it made walking in torn boots dangerous. Birds had been singing above them, and Hawke was going ever so slightly grey at his left temple, and Anders loved him with a passion he’d honestly thought existed only in stories despite the hot (red, burning, _explosive_ ) wreckage he’d made of Hawke’s safe and comfortable Hightown life. _I don’t want you to be tied to me_ , he’d said, haltingly. _I love you, and I know you love me, I don’t - I don’t need you to prove it to me. Not like this_.

 _You think this is about proof?_ Hawke cocked his head to one side. Grey in his temple and threading through his beard, creases at the edges of his eyes; he was still the most handsome man Anders had seen.

 _I don’t want you to grow to hate me_ , Anders had said, very quietly, there in the middle of the road while the birds sang joyfully and the sun shone bright and splendid on their ragged shoulders. _It’s selfish, I know, I -_

Hawke had said nothing. He doubled back and took Anders’s hand; twined their fingers together, staff-callous to staff-callous, and his eyes were bright and warm. They said everything, right there. When Hawke moved in to kiss him, Anders was already leaning halfway-in. They didn’t speak of it again. They didn’t think they’d need to.

He re-read Varric’s missive one more time, and let himself roll it back up, aware of Hawke’s eyes on him. “Good news about Sebastian,” he said, very carefully. “After a thrashing like that, it’ll probably be a while before he sets more assassins after us.”

“Shame,” Hawke said. “The last pair were so helpful, too.”

Anders felt compelled to point out that “You set your dog on them, hamstrung them, and stole all their gear, leaving them in the middle of the Frostbacks with nothing but the clothes on their backs.”

Hawke grinned, an expression that Anders might have found worrying if they weren’t the men they were, living the lives they lived. Hawke was no more or less bloodthirsty than he had to be, than they _both_ had to be. The assassins had had letters on them detailing their intent; their bodies would be found eventually, and the letters looted by some scavenger or another, and their legend would spread: a cautionary tale. “Their gear was incredibly useful,” he said. “Say what you will about Sebastian, he outfits his men well. I’m still using one of their hatchets to make camp with. It’s kept one hell of an edge.”

Anders covered his mouth with his sleeve, fighting back a - on further thought, grossly inappropriate - smile. Hawke’s simple determination to find the positives in their situation was a trait as endearing as any other, even now, more than a decade since they had met and with tens of thousands of miles beneath their feet. Still, he couldn’t resist glancing down at the rolled-up missive, the subtle message, the sign of a world changing around them. Because of them.

“It’s supposed to be a mild winter in the Marches this year,” he noted; left it open, let the insinuation curl between them. It had been six years since Hawke had set foot in the city that had named him Champion, the city in which he had once made a home, and Anders would be lying if he said that he did not, sometimes, think about it. About games of Wicked Grace and Aveline frowning at her cards and Fenris nursing his wine cup, eyes glinting in the light of Varric’s wrought-glass lanterns, mouth turned into a strange half-smile like he wanted to join in but was not sure if he should; about the Hanged Man, and the sewers, and Hightown’s smooth grey stone; about red velvet curtains and a carpet to cushion the dog’s weary old bones. Beside him, Hawke was silent, staring down at their reflections in the rippling water.

His knees ached on cold mornings; his left elbow stiffened sometimes, where he had broken it long ago on one of his escapes. He’d forgotten how many years it had been since he had found his first grey hair. Some days Hawke held his hands over their campfire with his eyebrows drawn and his mouth pinched with more than mere exhaustion; some days Anders felt the same throbbing ache in his wrists and knuckles, echoes of his days spent scratching out a desperate manifesto nobody important would ever read. The dog limped, his back hurt, Hawke favoured his right leg in a fight. 

_This is no life for old men_ , Anders thought, with a trace of regret. Only a trace. With the memories of better times he saw too the gold statues of the Chantry; the blood inexpertly scrubbed from the flagstones in the Gallows, the incurious expression Karl had worn even as he sank to his knees, hand to the knife jutting from between his ribs.

“Any Marcher winter is mild, compared to Fereldan,” Hawke said, slowly. His hand moved, cupping the back of his dog’s head; the mutt glanced at him, tongue still hanging out, ears pricked and ready. 

“But you know what’s even better than a Marcher winter, love? _Antivan_ winters, or so I hear. I don’t think we’ve had one, yet.” His eyes flicked toward Anders, mouth curving up at one side. “I’ve always said there’s no point in trying to pretend the old ways are better just because they’re familiar.”

“What about Varric?” Anders asked lightly, raising an eyebrow, and leaned back on his hands. In the water, Hawke’s reflection tilted its head toward him; the image shivered and then broke apart as a kingfisher plunged down, barely four feet from them, in pursuit of its prey. The mabari leaned forward, suddenly tense and intent, eyes tracking the bird’s movement across the water. A lightning bolt, Anders thought, maybe two, and supper would be sorted; no empty bellies tonight, not for any of them, not if he had his say. After all, why should the kingfishers have all the luck?

“Varric,” Hawke said firmly, over the low sound of his dog’s hunting snarl, fingers snaking into his peeling, worn leather collar, “can look after himself. He has so far, even before he went and made friends with the Inquisition - fine, fine! Go on, boy, get!”

The dog plunged into the water in a single fluid bound, jaws parted; when he had sight of prey, he moved like a much younger dog, as though the hunt itself could peel the years from his back. Anders watched him move with an odd tightness in his chest, and thought of the mutt dozing by a Hightown fire, bored and restless and desperate for attention Hawke hardly had time to give him. Hawke loved his dog - Maker, Anders could only hope to one day be loved quite so much - but a mabari warhound wasn’t, strictly speaking, necessary for a member of Kirkwall’s nobility.

“Do you miss it?” Anders asked. No more pretenses. He’d loved Hawke too much, for too long.

Hawke said nothing for several seconds, as his dog thrashed around in the water and the birds in the trees overlooking the stream screamed their alarm; when Dog caught a trout and lifted his head from the water to show it off, fish-tail wriggling with frantic death throes between his teeth and scattering water-droplets all over the place, he beamed with pride. Anders just waited. He’d been patient for three years, once, trying to temper his own impulse to take a running leap into the abyss, trying to balance his own desperate need to love and be loved without oversight or censure against the weight of the spirit in his head and the obligation upon his shoulders. It was only after Hawke had shown him that he did not need to choose - that he did not need to have Hawke or the plight of the mages, that Hawke could help him with the latter - had he broken.

“Sometimes I think about it,” Hawke admitted, as the water settled and the dog hauled himself onto the opposite bank, crunchily enjoying his fish. “I remember the feeling of… acceptance, of having people look at me and know what I was, of not having to hide. I remember walking into the Hanged Man after that damnable business with the Qunari and having people cheer me. I made a home there. My mother is still buried there - what’s left of her, after that monster.”

It was exactly what Anders suspected. The honesty was refreshing, if unsurprising. Hawke had always put down longer roots than Anders ever had, had made attachments easier than Anders had. Anders had recognised that friendly charm and easy grace Hawke bore the moment he saw it, before he had even known what Hawke was, what he could do. He glanced down at his hands in his lap, long fingers stilled, at rest; sometimes he still woke up and expected them to be dyed blue, stained by ink he could not scrub off even after the blood from his patients had long been cleaned away.

He must have made some small noise, some sign of his thought process, because Hawke sighed and raised both hands to scrub at his hair. “Don’t,” Hawke said, and then, “I can’t go back there, Anders. No more than I could go back to Lothering, or you could go back to the Circle tower in Fereldan. I thought we’d had this conversation.”

Anders smiled at his chiding tone, looking out over the stream at the reeds, bending and whispering in the breeze. The sun was edging up now, well and truly; the pink half-light of dawn was giving way beneath an odd shade of green beneath the forest canopy, the faint shimmer of frost over the ground melting away. “I know that, love,” he said, very lightly. “I’m not afraid that you’ll leave. I just… wanted to remind you that there are other choices out there, I suppose. It wasn’t an easy lot you chose for yourself.”

“No harder than yours,” Hawke pointed out. He slid a hand over the rough rocks and packed earth, until it came to a stop atop Anders’s; his palm was warm, his touch firm and strong. On reflex Anders turned his hand over and slipped his fingers in between his lover’s.

Hawke said, “I’m proud of Varric for turning Kirkwall around, but I’m not sorry to leave. What we’ve been doing, the places we’ve been - well. Bar fights at the Hanged Man and pretending that if I just ignored the Gallows long enough Meredith would sort herself out, that’s what I remember.” He sighed. “Kirkwall was home, but so was Lothering before that, and Lothering’s been gone for many years. I’ll miss it, just like I miss Fereldan, but…”

Anders dared glance at him. “But?”

Hawke was smiling, at nothing in particular; he gave Anders’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “Dawn in the Anderfels,” he said. “More colours than Isabela’s ridiculous hats. That jungle in Rivain; I never thought flowers could be so big. And do you remember the young couple in Nevarra, who wanted us at their wedding?”

Anders did. Two renegade mages from the White Spire, drunk on their freedom. The elf’s family had welcomed her back with tears of gratitude for the return of their stolen daughter, and been willing to take both her lover, a human woman, and two human fugitives into their home and under their protection. They’d stayed long enough to see the couple wed and then slipped out in the dead of night, determined to see more mages as happy as the two free women had been.

“Skyhold,” Hawke said, and grinned wolfishly, a flash of white teeth amidst his dark beard. “I wish you could have seen it. The tents outside the castle went on for an age, all those mages, all free. I didn’t stay long, but plenty of them knew you, and there was as much gratitude as resentment.”

“You said,” Anders replied quietly, and watched Hawke pick his hand up, press a kiss against his knuckles with a casualness that still made the Circle mage in him go weak at the knees. Open affection, freedom, the sky unveiled above him; the things he’d dreamed of, growing up in the Circle, and now finally his. 

Admittedly the assassins and the posters on the Chantry boards and the occasional bounty hunter hadn’t been part of the dream, but… it had been five years. There were less and less of those. Thedas was moving on, adjusting to change in its own way, and losing interest in old crimes.

“We can’t run forever,” Hawke said. “I know that. You know that. But I knew what I was getting into, and I thought it was worth it.” He leaned heavily into Anders, his shoulder solid and warm against Anders’s own; his eyes were bright and sharp, and Anders didn’t think he could look away from them if he tried. Not that he would. “Fugitives,” Hawke said.

“Together,” Anders agreed, and then, feeling the blood pounding in his wrists, in the back of his ears, the pit of his belly, added, “Until the day we die.”

Hawke grinned, and leaned in closer; Anders hardly dared blink, not even when he gently touched their foreheads together. “Got it in one,” he said. His breath was hot on Anders’s face, and hardly fresh, but Anders was certainly not in any state to complain; not when he was lost in the gold of Hawke’s eyes, the grey (silver) in his hair, the creases (laugh-lines) at the edges of his eyes. The dimple in his cheek, and the winter-chilled redness of his lips as he added, “Anyway, the best parts of Kirkwall came with me when I left.”

Anders’s face immediately burned, and he knew he was flushed; he was so used to Hawke’s disassembling that it took him by surprise when Hawke was this direct. He fought the impulse to look away. “Just to be clear,” he said, rubbing his thumb over Hawke’s knuckles, “You’re not talking about the dog, are you? Because if you are - ”

Hawke interrupted him with a groan. “Anders,” he said, “love of my life, sweetheart, my love - stop talking,” and when Anders did, Hawke closed that last inch or two between them and kissed him, with infinite tenderness.

Six years, Anders thought, and three years before that, back in Kirkwall; and three years before _that_ , down in Darktown fantasizing about this almost every night - and his heart still beat a ridiculous tempo against his ribs, his pulse pounding in his wrist; Hawke tasted like salt and it was going to be one of _those_ kisses, where Hawke’s tongue slipped into his mouth and made him go all weak at the knees. Anders tightened his grip on Hawke’s hand, his anchor; cupped Hawke’s shoulderblade in his free hand, and let his lover’s weight bear him down to the rough stones by the edge of the stream in the middle of nowhere, while around them dragonflies hummed and frogs croaked and the reeds hissed and whispered to him, to _them_ , of life and the world going on around them.

It didn’t take long for Anders’s back to start protesting its rocky bed, or for his knee to start twinging. From the way Hawke was shifting atop him, no doubt his elbow was starting to protest the angle. Anders let him go a half-dozen heartbeats later, and licked his lips after the kiss was broken, more to contain the oddly electric tingle Hawke left behind than to savour his lover’s flavour. This too, he thought, was a part of the natural order of things; like the reeds swaying in the breeze and the kingfishers who lived and hunted here and would continue to do so long after the two of them had moved on. He wasn’t the athletic apprentice who could be bent over the nearest desk; Hawke wasn’t the handsome smooth-faced apostate who had teased him about holding back until that single strand of self-control that kept Anders from admitting what he really wanted had snapped clean in two.

“Well,” Anders said, sitting upright and trying to remember how to breathe. “You make a persuasive argument for Antivan winters,” and Hawke smiled and leaned in to kiss him again, much gentler. He lifted his chin into the kiss, hummed happily, felt Hawke’s mouth curve into a small slash of a smile against his own; there was a giddiness within his chest, so strong and so overwhelming even the ache in his joints couldn’t hold up against it. He touched their foreheads together again, reached up to cup the back of Hawke’s head in his palm, felt the ticklish softness of his hair, and looked right into his lover’s eyes as he said, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” said Hawke, with conviction so absolute it made Anders’s stomach clench. “Sandwiches or not, Hightown or not. I love you when you heal my dog and I love you when you tear templars apart, and I love you on lumpy hard ground and I love you on feather mattresses, and I love you even when, sometimes, you’re the most frustrating person in my life. I love you more than Kirkwall, and I… well. I love you more than the entire fucking Chantry, that’s for sure.” After a moment, he added, “And I know you love me too, Anders.”

Anders swallowed, closed his eyes. Behind his eyelids he saw red curtains and carpets and red silk sheets, and Hawke bathed in the warm light of the fireplace, as he had looked nine years ago, the day they made love for the first time. There had been so very much red in his life - the red of open wounds, of Chantry banners and templars skirts, of blood trickling from Karl’s mouth, of Kirkwall’s Chantry, sacrificed for a different tomorrow - but always it came down to this: what he would do for those he loved.

( _I’d drown us in blood to keep you safe_ , he’d told Hawke once, desperate and afraid and somehow not realising Hawke would do the same for him.)

“Yes,” he said. Kirkwall was miles behind them. There was no changing this, not for any of them. “There can be no second chances,” he said slowly, as he’d said once before, a long time ago in a different Thedas; and this time, Hawke smiled. His eyes were the same bright gold as they’d been ten years ago, a stranger stepping foot into his clinic looking only for some maps. Strange, Anders thought, over the rush of affection pulsing within his chest, how far they had come. Together.

“There can be no turning back,” Hawke agreed.

He thought of the boy in the Circle, curled into a ball in a cell shaped solely to contain; and he thought of Antiva, and the sun setting across a warm and balmy bay. This was not how he thought his life would end up, but that was okay. 

There may not be any turning back, but together, they would go on. It was what they did, and what they did best. Hunted or not, hated or not; they’d survive.

They had each other, and after all, there wasn’t much else Anders really needed, beyond that.  


**Author's Note:**

> A lovely anon sent me a message on my tumblr about my post-Inquisition fic, 'A Toast to Distant Friends' (which is a gen story about Varric). They wanted to know if I'd consider writing a story following Hawke's return to Kirkwall, as stated in the Trespasser epilogue slides; this story was my attempt to explain what my Hawke was up to at the time.
> 
> Somewhere along the way, it became nauseatingly sappy. This happens more often than I'd like to admit to.


End file.
